The Pharisees put their trust in their heritage in Abraham, but our only hope for salvation is to have God as our true Father. Pastor Nate Harlan preaches.
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Transcript:
Introduction
Our sermon text for this Lord’s Day is John 8:39-47:
Jesus said to them, “If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
Saints, this is the word of God. Thanks be to God.
Understanding the Audience
Well, saints, the passage before us is a continuation of the conversation that the Lord Jesus has been having throughout John 8 during the Feast of Booths with certain Jews who were there to question him and to inquire of him. We mustn’t miss the fact that John frames everything that occurs between verses 39 through 47, everything that is said, as Jesus speaking to those Jews who had believed in him, as we see in verse 31.
That is who Jesus is speaking to. He’s not speaking to those who had outwardly rejected him and shunned him. He is speaking to those Jews who had, in one way or another, claimed to have believed in Jesus. That is something worth noting. Jesus is not talking to pagans here in these verses. He is talking to God’s people.
He is not talking to those who are outside of Israel, but those who were inside Israel. And not only were they in Israel, they had the highest status in Israel. These were, in all likelihood, the most respectable men in Jerusalem and among all of God’s people at the time. This is something that needs to be impressed upon us because the words that Christ gives them are very strong words, words that we need to take to heart.
I want to remind you, as I often do, because we need to be reminded of it, that we dare not, whenever we read scripture and we see scripture showing us, revealing bad examples to us, we dare not ever say, “that’s not me, that can’t be me.” We must instead say, “oh, that could be me. Maybe it is me, perhaps.” But at the very least, I can always say, “that could possibly be me. I am capable of being that guy or those guys.” I want to say to you, as we read this passage, John 8:39-47, that we must all certainly say that, amen?
This is for us. I’m not saying we’re all sons of the devil, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that we could be. We could be. We might be. So we need to read this and we need to pay attention. We dare not do what these certain Jews did, which is to insist that what Jesus was saying about them was not true. Again, this is an argument over identity. Who is Jesus and who are these Jews who he’s arguing with? Who were they really?
That argument is continuing and now the Lord Jesus is going to boldly and plainly put the truth out on the table and just make a pronouncement, make a judgment of these men, revealing what was invisible about them, but that what he could see about them very clearly, because unlike us, Jesus being God incarnate, could look past appearances and see the heart of a man. So here he is saying the truth about them. “You are of your father, the devil.” Those are words you never want to hear from the son of God, amen? If he said that to you, what would you do about it? What would you do?
Answering the Truth
Look what they do. Now in verse 39, we start with, “they answered him.” All right, so we’ve got to walk back for a moment and what are they answering? What did Jesus just say to them? Well, verse 38, this is what he said. This is the context. “I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you will. You do what you have heard from your father.” So they are answering that statement of Christ from verse 38.
So now Jesus is making a statement here that they have different fathers. Christ has his father and Christ’s father is not their father. Jesus says what he has heard from his father and these Jews were doing what they had heard from their father. That’s what they were doing. So in verse 39, they’re answering what Jesus has just said. “Abraham is our father.” That’s their assertion. “Abraham is our father.”
That’s what they were always doing. They’re always appealing to their genealogical and covenantal descent from Abraham. They understood that that is what made them right with God and their thinking, that’s what made them children of God. We’re going to see that more in this text. That’s going to be confirmed when they call themselves sons or children of God. “We are sons even of God.” Saying “even God sees us as his children.” Why? Because we’re descended from Abraham.
The True Meaning of “Works”
The problem was, as the Lord Jesus says, that they were not descended from Abraham and he points this out. They weren’t doing the works that Abraham did. They were not doing that. They were not descended from Abraham in respect to his faith. They were not united to Abraham by faith. They were united to him physically in the sense that they had descended from him, father from father to father to father. They were united to him covenantally in the sense that the promise that God had given to Abraham continued to be declared on the earth through them, yes, through that covenantal succession from generation to generation, but they were not united to him by faith and saints.
That’s the kind of union that matters the most. That’s something that’s being declared to us here is that, yeah, their genealogical union with Abraham, their covenantal union with Abraham didn’t count for anything. What counted would have been their union with Abraham by sharing in his faith. They lacked that union. They were not united with Abraham in that sense. They lacked his faith, as we’re going to see, and that meant they weren’t his children at all.
Jesus says this to them. “You would be doing the works that Abraham did.” What kind of works did Abraham do? We have to stop there and think a moment. Did he do a lot of good works? Did he live a sinless life or something? No, that’s not what Jesus is talking about. What Jesus is talking about is the fact that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. That’s what Abraham did. So there’s a little bit of a play going on here, a play on words, “the works that Abraham did.” Well, the reality is Abraham didn’t do works. He believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. That’s what Abraham did, and these Jews weren’t doing that.
Now, did Abraham have works? Yes, Abraham had works. He followed God. He left his homeland to go and follow God and sojourn in the promised land. Yes, he did that, but we see in Romans 4, Paul makes it very clear that Abraham’s body was as good as dead, and in spite of that fact, he believed God, and that’s what the Lord Jesus is getting at here. Abraham didn’t put any trust in his own flesh. His faith was in God, and that’s the irony is that these Jews were putting all of their trust in Abraham’s flesh because they were descended from his flesh, and that’s what they put their faith in.
That’s not even what Abraham did. Abraham didn’t trust in his own flesh, not at all, because his body was good as dead. He trusted in God, not his own body. Do you see it, saints? That’s the problem with these guys. Not even Abraham trusted in his flesh, but these descendants of his did. Not in God, not in God, and this is what Jesus is getting at. They weren’t believing God. They were not doing their works in faith.
All of the works that Abraham did were works he did by faith in Yahweh. Abraham didn’t do anything by faith in his own body. Why not? Because his body was good as dead. Read Romans 4. Abraham’s body was good as dead. How much trust did Abraham put in his body? None whatsoever. He put all of his faith in Yahweh and God because only God deserved his faith. His body didn’t.
So everything Abraham did do with his body, all those works he performed, were works that were performed by faith in God, and that tells us something about the nature of true good works. In order for a work to be truly good, it must be performed in faith. You might do a work that outwardly appears to be good, but if your faith is not in God and you perform that good work, that’s actually an evil work. That was true for these Jews.
These Jews did all kinds of outwardly good works. They were good works in appearance, but they did not do them in faith. They did not circumcise in faith. They did not participate in all their rituals in faith. They did not tithe in faith. They did not do all the various things they did to impress others, to make themselves look righteous to men. They didn’t do any of them by faith in God. They did all of them by putting their faith in themselves and in their own flesh, and they were self-deceived by that.
Self-Deception and the Consequences
We have to bear that in mind, saints. Good works, what’s a good work? It depends on the object of your faith. That’s what determines, that’s what distinguishes a good work from a work of lawlessness or a work of iniquity. It’s not the work itself. It’s the object of faith and the one performing the work. We have to get that. We have to understand that. Because we tend to tell ourselves, “well, I did a good thing.” Is it good? “Well, what do you mean? I helped an old lady cross the street.” But did you do it by faith in Yahweh, or did you do it by faith in yourself, thinking “everyone knows how good I am now?”
“Look how good I am. I’m so good. This proves I’m good.” No, it doesn’t. Amen, do your good works prove you’re good? No. They don’t. The Jews did not believe God. It wasn’t just that they rejected Christ, as we’re going to see, it’s that they rejected God. Mind-blowing stuff, it really is. This was just a complete inversion of how they saw the world, how they saw themselves. They saw themselves as God’s people. They saw themselves as being the people of faith, and yet they were not that at all. They were the exact opposite of how they saw themselves. The exact opposite.
Boy, that’s so true. This is one of the things that just stands out to me from this passage. It’s just how we have such a tendency in our sin to deceive ourselves, and to thinking we’re somebody that we are not, when we are the opposite of who we think we are. We are so dangerously capable of such self-deception, saints. That’s why we can’t trust ourselves. Not for one minute. “I’m good. I’m all right. I’m not that bad.” Don’t believe it. Don’t believe yourself.
Only God knows who you really are. Only God knows who I really am. We better submit ourselves to him and to his judgment. We better realize we can’t fool him. That’s why one of the reasons these Jews hated Jesus. They couldn’t fool him. They couldn’t fool him. Now, we have to remember, as we’re reading through this passage, we have to remember John 3, right? That those who hate the light will refuse to come into it, lest their deeds be exposed as evil.
As long as they’re not in light, their deeds don’t look evil. Their deeds look okay. Their deeds look good. But the moment they’re exposed to the light, which is Jesus, what happens? Their deeds are exposed to evil. That’s exactly what’s happening right here, right now in this passage. We’re seeing an example of the truth that’s taught in John 3:20. It’s being put on display right here in John 8:39-47.
These Jews and their works are being exposed as evil through the light of Christ, who’s exposing their hearts, cutting past their appearance, cutting past their works, and exposing their true nature, exposing what they’re really like. This is why they hated him, because he exposed them. He exposed their true identity that they were trying to hide. And this is what Jesus says. He knew their hearts. How do we know that? Because he says, “you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.” And then he goes on to say, “this is not what Abraham did.” Amen, Lord.
No, that’s not what Abraham did. But they couldn’t deny it. They could not deny that. They knew he was right. They couldn’t refute him. No, Abraham never sought to kill anyone who spoke the truth that he said from God. Remember Melchizedek. Did Abraham try to kill Melchizedek? No, he paid tithes to him. Melchizedek was a priest of God. That’s what scripture says, Genesis. Abraham didn’t try to kill him. Abraham paid tithes to him. So yes, he’s right. This is not what Abraham did.
You Are Doing the Works of Your Father
Then he goes on to say this in verse 41. “You are doing the works your father did.” Now, wow. Now that, again, we have to stop and say, “wait a second.” See it from their perspective. Because from their perspective, as they saw themselves, as far as they were concerned, they were working their hides off trying to do good works. They thought they could attain righteousness by works. This is what Paul says in Romans nine. And Paul knew something about that, having been a Pharisee of Pharisees. That’s what they believed. We can be righteous. We can make ourselves righteous by our works.
So they wanted to be righteous. They were always working hard to look righteous. And yet Jesus says of them, this is why it’s such a striking statement. He says, “you are doing the works your father did.” Now, what is Jesus saying about all of their works? He’s saying they’re a lie. They’re a lie. All of them. They’re all a lie. Why? Because that’s what their father does, Jesus is gonna explain here in a little bit. He’s a liar, the devil. He’s a liar. He’s been a liar and a murderer from the beginning. He’s the father of lies and all he does is lie, lie, lie.
That is what they were doing. Those are the works the devil does. He tells lies. He promotes lies. He sows lies. He creates lies. Not truth, not life, not goodness, not beauty. Lies, twisting of the truth. And that’s what they were doing. All of their works were a lie. That’s a sweeping condemnation our Lord is making of all their works. He says it so swiftly and with so few words it’s easy to miss it, but we mustn’t. This is a powerful statement Jesus is making about them. “You are doing the works your father did.” All you do is a lie. Everything you do is a lie. Everything you do.
Then they have an interesting response to him. They double down. Of course, here’s where the argument’s going on, right? Who’s our father really and who’s your father really, Jesus? So they double down by saying “we, we are not born of sexual immorality.” And then they add to that “we have one father, even God.” Wow. So they’re upping the ante, right? They are certainly doubling down. Jesus is saying Abraham’s not your father. You have a different father.
They don’t like where he’s going with this. So they double down and say “we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father.” “Oh yeah, we’ll show you something, Jesus. Abraham isn’t just our father. God is our father.” Here they’re insisting that that’s how God saw them. That’s how blind and self-deceived they were. They dared to say “this is how God sees us. God owns us as, as his children.” And yet here is God incarnate saying, “no, you’re not. No, you’re not.”
They’re arguing with God about whether or not they are his children. What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with us? How can we engage in such insanity and such stupidity? My goodness, saints, we’re capable of it. We can be so self-deceived that we’ll have a nonsensical, absurd argument with God like this. “Yes, we are your children. Yes, we are.” When God is saying, “no, you’re not.” That’s what they’re doing.
Now, what’s interesting in their retort to Jesus, “we are not born of sexual immorality.” There is a possibility here that that was a jab at our Lord. Why? Well, because of his virgin birth. It may have been that the miraculous nature of his birth was known or at least rumored that he had been conceived in Mary’s virgin womb and therefore did not have a human father. And so there may also have been a rumor that that was not true and that Jesus actually had been illegitimately conceived outside of wedlock and therefore conceived in sexual immorality. And so when they’re saying this, they’re saying, “hey, Jesus, we know about you.”
“You were born of sexual immorality, not of God. We are of God.” So what they’re trying to do potentially, and I think that’s probably what they are doing in verse 41, is they’re trying to flip the script on Jesus. “You were born of sexual immorality. We don’t even know who your father was, Jesus, because they would have rejected his virgin birth, of course, but God is our father.” He’s not your father. “We know where you’re going with this, Jesus. We know where you’re going. We’re just gonna cut you off at the pass and we’re gonna pull the rug out from under your feet. We’re gonna just bring out in front of everybody that you are of perhaps ignomious origins, but we’re not.”
“God’s our father.” How do we know? “Because I know who my father was and who his father was and his father before him, all going all the way back to Abraham, I know.” “Do you, Jesus? Do you know who your daddy was?” If that’s really what’s going on here, and like I said, I can’t prove it to you, but I think it’s the case. These guys, I mean, get a load of them. Get a load of them getting personal like this. It just shows you how hardened they were, how hostile, how opposed to Christ they were, how opposed to the truth they were.
You don’t forget, saints, that it’s not as if the Lord Jesus was just some upstart who started saying crazy cockamamie things one day. He had turned water into wine. He had fed the thousands with the fish and the loaves. He had walked on water. He performed miracles upon miracles by this point. He had confirmed his power and his identity by the signs and wonders that he had performed, and yet they are responding to him like this. They’re responding, why? Well, because we’re going to see, because they really were liars at heart, liars by nature.
There was nothing ever was going to get them to admit the truth. No matter what, they were going to tenaciously cling to the lie because they were of their father, the devil. That is exactly what Jesus says about them. But here they’ve thrown the gauntlet down. Verse 41, they’ve probably slapped Jesus, metaphorically speaking, slapped our Lord in the face. “Hey, we’re not so sure about who your daddy is, Jesus, from Nazareth, who fathered you anyway, but God is our father.”
So now they’ve thrown the gauntlet down. They’ve made the assertion, “God is our father.” That’s how God sees us. That’s what they’re asserting. Now, here’s why our Lord lays it down right back. Verse 42, Jesus said to them, “If God were your father, you would love me. For I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.”
The Danger of Rejecting Christ
So the Lord Jesus is not backing down at all. He’s affirming that he was from God and that if they had actually loved God, they would have loved him as well. There’s something for us to recognize here about the Lord Jesus Christ is that you cannot love the father without loving the son at the same time. It’s impossible to love the father and yet hate and reject the son. If you love the father, then you will receive the son. You will love the son, you will trust in the son because the father and the son are one and because the son has been sent by the father.
But they hated the son and their hatred of the son proved that they did not love God, that they did not know God. Then he asks them a rhetorical question in verse 43. “Why do you not understand what I say?” And then he answers his own question. “It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.” Now again, we have to pause here for a moment and recognize what Jesus is telling them. Why didn’t they understand him? It wasn’t because the Lord Jesus was too hard to understand and it wasn’t because of some sort of intellectual deficiency within them that prevented them from knowing or understanding what he was getting at.
The reason why they did not understand him is because they refused to understand him. They refused to accept what he said. That’s why the Lord Jesus said they could not bear to hear what he said. It wasn’t that his words or his meaning were unclear. They understood what he was saying, but they couldn’t bear it. They could not grant what he was saying because what he was saying was taking their view of themselves, their view of the world, their view of God, he was taking that and flipping it upside down, just turning it on its head completely so they did not know what the truth was any longer. They could not withstand that. They could not bear to have their world turned upside down. They could not bring themselves to admit, to confess that what he was saying about them was true.
He goes on to say, “you,” and this is verse 44, this is where the Lord Jesus says it openly, blatantly, “you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
The Nature of Satan and the Son of God
Now this is very interesting because not only is the Lord Jesus exposing them for who they really were, exposing their hearts, exposing who they were inwardly, spiritually, and what he’s revealing is that they were not at all who they appeared to be, not at all. Were they righteous? No. Were they sons of God? Not at all. They were the opposite. But not only are Christ’s words profound for that reason, they’re also profound because here the Lord Jesus is telling us something about the devil himself, what he is like. And we need to pay attention to that, right? The Lord Jesus says that the devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning.
Does this mean that God created Satan as evil? No, it doesn’t mean that. What it means is that the devil was a murderer and a liar from the beginning of human history. And how was he a murderer from the beginning? Well, because he sought to destroy man. He sought to murder Adam and Eve. He sought to bring about their death by tempting Eve and then Adam who was led astray so that they disobeyed God and therefore became subject to the curse of death. When Satan, and I’m assuming here the serpent was Satan, when the serpent tempted Eve, he was committing murder. That’s what he was doing. He was acting on murderous intent. He wanted Eve to die. He wanted Adam to die. And he achieved that end by lying. So he’s both a murderer and a liar.
He sought to murder through deceit. And he was like that way from the beginning, meaning the beginning of the world. The beginning of human history, from the beginning, our beginning in Adam and in Eve. In case there was any doubt, the Lord Jesus tells us, and we need to understand this about the devil so that we don’t see him as some sort of sympathetic character. You can hear that sometimes in modern thought and in popular culture. You almost see the devil as, he’s the rebel. He fights the power. He’s almost admirable for that reason, right? “We fight tyranny. We fight the power. We fight the man. We’re sympathetic.” And the Lord Jesus is setting the record straight here.
If you wanna know what the devil is like, then listen to what Jesus says about him. The Lord tells us that there is no truth in him at all. No truth. Everything he does is a lie. We need to recognize that about Satan. That tells us about the devil: We cannot trust him. He is not to be trusted ever. Under any circumstances, at any time, is the devil to be trusted. He is to be distrusted at all times.
We must also recognize, because of what Jesus tells us about the devil here, that he is seeking our destruction at all times. This is what he is bent upon. He is a liar by nature, or according to his character, this is what he does. He is also a murderer by nature, and he is seeking our destruction at all times. So we shouldn’t trust him, not only because he’s a liar, but because if we do trust him, then we know what he’s gonna do with us. He’s going to destroy us. That’s what he wants. He wants us to be destroyed. He wants us to be ruined. He wants us to be cast away from the presence of God forever because he hates us, he hates God, he hates us as God’s image bearers, and he does nothing but seek to deceive us and to destroy us. There is nothing sympathetic there. There is nothing to admire. There is only evil and hate and wickedness.
The Lord says that Satan is the father of lies. Ultimately, all the lies circulating in our world, all of the deceit, all of the darkness finds its origin in him. He was the first liar. That’s an honor, if we want to call it that, that belongs to him. He was the first creature to lie, to deceive, and that is all he does.
I bring all of this up not to glorify Satan, but to compare him to the Lord Jesus Christ and to ask this question, why on earth, why on earth would we follow the father of lies rather than the Son of God? Why would we do that? Does the Son of God lie to us? He can’t. He is God. It is impossible for him to lie. “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all,” 1 John 1:5. He never lies. He will never lie to us.
Does he seek our destruction? Are you kidding me? He was destroyed to save us from destruction. No, he doesn’t destroy us. No, he doesn’t seek our destruction. He came to seek and to save the lost. So just knowing this vast disparity between God the Son and the father of lies, it becomes rather obvious who we ought to follow, amen? I think I will follow the one who loves me, who gave himself for me, who will never lie to me rather than the one who will always lie to me and will always be bent on my destruction. Who should I follow? The Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, that’s obvious.
Then what was wrong with these Jews? And what’s wrong with you and me? That choice is an obvious one that I just painted for you and yet, and yet what do we do so often? We start to stray here. I’m straying towards the devil in case you didn’t know. Not really, I hope, just figuratively. We wander. We hear those lies. Very sweet lies, very enticing lies and we start to go, why? It’s so stupid. Amen? Come on, and I do it too.
I’m like, “Nate, you’re such a moron. What, what are you doing?” Why do I bring this up? Because we gotta be aware. We gotta be aware of how easily we can be played by the devil. He had these Jews that Jesus was speaking to, he had them right in his hand. They were bound and tied and chained and enslaved and the devil was leading them around with a leash and they were on his leash and they liked it.
Jesus had come to cut that stupid leash and they didn’t want it cut, they protected it. “Oh no, no, no, no.” They chose it, saints. In rejecting Jesus Christ, these men who he’s speaking to were choosing to stay enslaved and snared by the prince of darkness. By the prince of the power of the air. This is exactly what Paul warns us against in Ephesians chapter two, verses one through three. That mankind, the rest of mankind who are not in Christ are children of wrath by nature, following the prince of the power of the air. That’s what happened when mankind fell. We fell into the hand of Satan who bound us and carried us off in chains. And these men and their stubborn, foolish, self-important, self-righteous pride refused to admit it.
The Path to Deliverance
“I’m not enslaved, no I’m not. I’m not a father of the devil, I’m not deceived. I’m not a liar, no I’m not.” In confronting them with the truth, the Lord Jesus was throwing the door wide open to them for their deliverance. Do you see it? He’s exposing to them the truth about themselves and if they had only believed him, then they could have cut that dumb leash and broken those chains and like we sing, “the dungeon fills with light. And I arose and went forth to follow thee.”
He’s throwing the dungeon door open here for them. Exposing them to their true slavery, to their true deceit, to their true character. And they’re choosing to remain in the dungeon, in the chains. Loyal to their father who hated them, who sought their destruction, who lied to them, loyal to him to the end. I want you to understand something. If you leave Christ, you are doing the same thing, amen? And he, the devil will lie to you, he’ll tell you that “no, you’re not abandoning Christ. You’re seeking freedom. You’re being intelligent. You’re demonstrating your wisdom and your worldliness. You know better than to believe in those fairy tales and that oppressive stuff in that old book about that guy, that sage, all those thousands of years ago.”
“You know better than all that, what need do you have for him? Be free, be smart, be intelligent, live your own way.” Don’t fall for that lie, ever. Don’t follow the father of lies, please. Follow the son of light, the son who is light. So the Lord Jesus is warning them, he’s warning us, to have nothing to do with Satan. He’s nothing like the devil, as I just mentioned to you. We need to remember that too.
When we see how awful and how horrible the devil is, it should make us love Jesus all the more because he’s the opposite of Satan. He’ll never lie to you. He’ll never cheat you. He’ll never ever betray you. He’ll never go back on his promises. He’ll never fail to do what he promised. He’ll never make false promises. And he’ll never destroy you. He will raise you up on the last day. How do we know? Because he promised he would. Go read John six. “I will raise you up on the last day.” You will not perish.
Love Jesus, would you? See his worthiness, see his glory, in contrast to the prince of darkness who is awful and despicable and a liar and a murderer. See how good Jesus is. The Pharisees, these Jews were blind to it, refused to see who Jesus truly was, refused to love him as he already said. We dare not be blind to him. We dare not be blind like them. We dare not be blind to the goodness and the glory and the loveliness, the worthiness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to cling to him with all of our hearts. We ought to love him with all of our hearts. We ought to trust him with all of our hearts because he is so good to us.
Because he is so trustworthy, it’s such a relief to the soul to finally have someone who you can trust at all times, at all places, in all circumstances, someone who is not gonna fail you ever, and someone who you are going to fail but who nonetheless will never fail you. Someone who doesn’t have duplicative intentions towards you. Who doesn’t promise you love and care while at the same time intending to stab you in the back. And to drag you to hell. That’s not Jesus. Thanks be to God.
So having pegged them for who they really were, Jesus again just continues to say, tell them the truth. “I tell the truth, you do not believe me.” And then he goes on to say, and again, he’s appealing to evidence in verse 46, “which one of you convicts me of sin?” And “if I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” The Lord’s point there is that they couldn’t convict him of sin. They couldn’t refute what he was saying. He had no sin. He was sinless. He wasn’t teaching any heresy or false doctrine. They could not outmaneuver him theologically. They could not outmaneuver him when it came to the scriptures because he wrote them. It’s his word. So they couldn’t pin anything on him and yet they still refused to believe him.
Everything he said was the truth. And then he asked the question again, “why don’t you believe me?” And he says, “whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” You are a liar by nature. You’re liars by nature because that’s what your father is and you’re just like him. And again, in confronting them with this truth, he’s exposing them for who they really were and exposing them for who they really were, he’s giving them the opportunity for deliverance, for salvation, for repentance.
Who is Your Father?
What would you do if Jesus said those things to you? I hope your response would be, “oh my goodness, Lord,” amen. I’m gonna say and pray what that tax collector prayed in Luke 18 in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican or tax collector. “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” Amen, Lord. “What you are saying about me is the truth. I’ve been deceived. I am not who I thought I was. I’ve been a liar. I’ve been a murderer. I have inverted the truth. I have believed lies. I have promoted lies. I have hated the light. I have hated God and I have hated you. This is all true. Forgive me. Please forgive me.”
That’s all it would have taken right here. Do you see it? That’s all they had to do. “What you say is true. Forgive us.” They don’t do it, as we’re going to see. They don’t do it.
How do we apply this to ourselves? Again, it’s like what are the obvious questions that are looking us in the face in the light of this text? Well, I think one of the most obvious questions, I mean, it’s obvious to me, maybe not to you, but to me, it’s like I read this and I see how self-deceived these Jews were, how they were not at all who they thought themselves to be, who they claimed to be, they claimed to be sons of God and they were absolutely not sons of God. They were sons of the devil, right?
So I think one of the more obvious questions that is staring us in the face in this text is this question in reference to ourselves, not just me, “who am I?” “Who am I? Am I a father or a child of the devil? Is the devil my father or is God my father? Which is true of me?” Is that an important question? It is a very important, it’s a critically important question. We have to ask it and we have to answer it. “Who’s my father?” I think that’s an obvious question that this text confronts us with.
Something else, in light of that question, there’s something we have to bear in mind here, right? We have to remember, “okay, who is Jesus talking to?” He’s not talking to a bunch of Baal worshipers, pagans, idolaters, who are going up to pagan shrines and committing child sacrifice. This is not who he’s talking to. He’s talking to Pharisees, to Sadducees, to the respectable religious sorts who had their stuff together, man. Well, manicured lawns and stuff, right? Big old phylacteries. They washed their hands every time before dinner. Ceremonially. That’s who he’s talking to.
So this tells us something. And what it tells us is, listen, it’s possible to belong to God’s people who are called his children and yet remain a child of the devil. That is possible. It was possible under the old covenant to have Abraham as your father and yet actually remain a child of the devil. That was possible. Under the new covenant, it’s possible to have the church as your mother, as she is often called by the reformers. “Yeah, the church is my mother, yes.” And yet, you can remain a child of the devil, amen? “Because I think every one of us in here would say, yeah, the church is my mother, yes. She baptized me, she teaches me, she shepherds me. Yeah, the church is my mother.” But is God your father?
We mustn’t assume like they did. We mustn’t assume that belonging to the church means that we are children of God. It doesn’t mean that. No, it doesn’t. It’s not merely a question of whether or not you’ve been baptized. It’s not merely a question of whether or not you take communion and listen to sermons and put on a Christian appearance. The question is, do you believe? Because that’s what Abraham did. This is what Paul says in Galatians 3. All who are sons of Abraham are sons of Abraham by faith. They’re descended from him by faith. They actually trust in God.
So that is the question that we must answer. The question is not, “am I in the church? Have I been baptized? Am I communicant? Do I listen to sermons? Do I have good doctrine?” No, that is not at all the question. The question is, “do you believe Jesus Christ?” Because that’s what Abraham did. As the Lord Jesus himself is going to say at the end of this chapter that we’ll get to next week, “Abraham saw my day and rejoiced.” So this is a question we must answer in respect to ourselves. “Do we believe in the Lord Jesus? Do I trust in him? Do I love him? Or can I not bear what he says?”
In order to answer that question, I don’t mean to give you fits and to send you off to engage in a lot of morbid introspection, losing your mind and being filled with anxiety as you’re trying to determine whether or not you are a child of the devil or a child of God through faith in Christ. That’s not my intent because you can’t answer the question. The question can be answered in this way, “how do you respond to Jesus Christ? How do you respond to his word? How do you respond to this passage in front of you?” Because if you know the Lord, if you trust in Christ, I will tell you how you’ll respond and I would just die on this hill.
If you know the Lord, if you believe in him, I don’t care about your baptism or being communicant or your doctrine, I don’t care about any of that right now, whatever. If you know the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him, you will read this text and you will flee right to him. And say, “Lord Jesus, I see myself in them. I am a lot like those guys. Save me. Save me, Lord. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to be self-deceived. I don’t want to think I’m a child of God when I’m actually a child of the devil.”
So save me. The other thing we have to consider when we’re answering this question, “am I a child of God or a child of the devil,” is whether or not we are living as hypocrites because that’s what these men did. They lived as hypocrites. They put on a Christian appearance, but in reality, they didn’t live like Christians at all. They didn’t confess their sins. They didn’t repent from their sins. They lived in rebellion. They did what they wanted.
How do you live? Do you live by faith in Christ? Do you live in humility? Do you confess your sins or do you live with the assumption that you’re good, that you don’t need to confess your sins? That you don’t have any sins to confess? I’ve met folks. I won’t name names and I’m not talking about anybody in here, but I have met people, I have known people. You ask them, “what sins have you committed?” and they’ll have to think about it. “Well, hmm.” “Okay.” “You’ll have to get back to me on that.” Okay.
We should be well familiar with the sins we commit and bringing them before the Lord. But this is a question we need to answer. Do we trust in Christ? And the way to answer that question is by trusting in Christ by trusting in him, by putting your faith in him, saying, “Lord, save me. Save me from my sin. Save me from self-deceit. Save me from all these things. I cannot save myself.” That’s one of the things.
That’s another truth that is staring us in the face within this text is that these men, these Pharisees, these Jews were unable to save themselves from their slavery to Satan. They weren’t able to do it. Not with all their good works, not with all of their covenantal faithfulness, so to speak, in the sense of keeping all of the practices and rituals, all of that didn’t count for anything. None of that could liberate them from their slavery to the father of lies, none of it. There was nothing they could do.
All that could liberate them was faith in Christ, and this is what we have to acknowledge before the Lord Jesus Christ is our own helplessness before him and our complete dependency upon him to deliver us from slavery to Satan. So I would say this to you, saints. As I talked to you earlier about being tempted to go with the father of lies and being tempted to depart from the Lord Jesus Christ, to listen to the lies of the enemy, don’t do that. Flee to Christ, and I think if there’s one thing that we should do in response to this text, we should ask that question, “am I a child of God or am I a child of the father of lies,” is that this text should drive us to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith.
That’s what it should do, because that’s all you can do. That’s all we can do. There’s no three steps. “Well, here are three things you can do.” None of that. All we can do is trust in the Lord and not in ourselves, and to repent from our self-deceit, to repent from our hypocrisy, and to put our trust in Christ and in Christ alone. I’ll close with this, and then we’ll pray.
I just wanted to reiterate, again, very briefly, the goodness, the greatness, and the worthiness of the Lord Jesus in comparison to the devil. I hope that that is very apparent to you in the light of this passage, how good Jesus is, how much he deserves our love and our trust. See that about him, and love him, and trust him, because he is nothing like the devil. He will not lie to you, so believe him, and believe him with all of your heart, saints. Let’s pray.
Closing Prayer
Father in heaven, this passage shakes us as we need to be shaken, Lord. It shakes us from trusting in our own outward appearance. It causes us to doubt ourselves, and Lord, we need to doubt ourselves, and we need to trust instead in your son. So Lord, please help us, Father, to respond to what we have read in this text. Help us to respond to it by fleeing to your son in faith, by cleaving to him all the more, trusting in him rather than ourselves, recognizing that it’s only through faith in Christ that we can be saved from slavery to the father of lies who deceives us and who seeks our destruction constantly.
So help us to cling to your son, Lord. And Father, we thank you for sending us your son who is so worthy, who is so true, who is so good, who is so beautiful. Help us to trust in him with all of our hearts because he deserves that trust. Help us to trust him to deliver us from the father of lies and to bring us into the truth, to forgive us of all of our sins, and to reconcile us to you. Father, we ask all of these things in the name of Christ our Lord, amen.
The Lord’s Supper and Benediction
Brothers and sisters, we must recognize that in order for this supper to do us any good at all, personally, it needs to be received in faith, amen? The mere act of participating in communion, the act itself doesn’t do you any good personally. It does the world good because it declares the death of Christ until it comes, but what benefit does it give the one who receives it in unbelief, without faith? It does them no good. As a matter of fact, it heaps condemnation upon them because the elements are not received by faith, and so it is essential for us to eat and to drink by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So as we eat and as we drink, we need to do so in faith. We need to do so trusting in the Lord Jesus and his character and his promises and his grace and the promises that are connected with his flesh and his blood. And what promises has he made about his flesh and his blood? We know those promises. It is not a mystery. He has promised that his flesh is sufficient to save us from the second death, amen? And he has promised that his blood is sufficient to take away all of our sins, amen?
So as you eat and as you drink, trust in his flesh to do what he has promised it does. Trust in his blood to do what he has promised it does, to save you from the second death, and to take away all of your sin. Eat and drink in faith. This is one of the ways, you heard me, I was contending with you, I was continually exhorting you during the sermon. Cling to Jesus, cling to Jesus. And when you eat and drink by faith, that’s what you’re doing.
This is something Jesus has given us, a way that we can together through physical means, cling to him by faith, manifesting our faith outwardly by saying, “Lord, look, everyone, look, world, look. I’m clinging to Jesus. I’m doing what he said. I trust in his flesh. I trust in his blood signified by these elements. I’m clinging to Christ and to him alone for my salvation. I trust in him, not the father of lies.”
So when we eat and drink at the Lord’s table in faith, we are forsaking the table of demons, forsaking them. We’re forsaking the father of lies, saying “I’m not gonna follow him. He’s a liar and he has been from the beginning.” I’m gonna follow the one who loved me, who gave himself for me, and will never lie to me. Saints, we have seen in the text we’ve considered this Lord’s Day, a very great contrast between the father of lies and the son of God. And I hope it’s been impressed upon you who you ought to follow, who you ought to listen to, who you ought to trust.
I think it’s obvious. Please remember that. We all need to remember this as we go out of these doors and go back into the world, because we are warned in scripture by Peter that “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” So it’s very important for us that we listen to James, that we “submit ourselves to God and resist the devil so that he will flee.” How do we submit ourselves to God? By trusting in his son.
When you are tempted by the father of lies, who is going to tempt you one way or another? You’re going to be tempted. You’re going to be tempted to go astray from the Lord Jesus Christ, to leave the God you love. And when that temptation comes, to doubt him, to distrust him, to disobey him, remember who he is. Remember that he will never lie to you. Remember that he loved you and gave himself for you. And in remembering who he is and what he has done for you, turn away from the father of lies. Resist him, he will flee. And trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, because he is worthy, amen?
Now receive the benediction with faith. “Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” Saints, go in peace.
Transcript by TurboScript · Formatting by Google Gemini
Photo by Daniel Páscoa on Unsplash